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Message: [QUOTE="smartascarrots, post: 10530622, member: 20853"] Not really, no. Taiwan and Korea were Japanese colonies, not Japanese targets. The war was not fought in their most productive lands, nor was Japan systematically destroying their industry, agriculture and transportation capabilities in the course of prosecuting their war. What parallel could be drawn between the three is that they all formed 'developmental states' under pretty nasty dictatorships and this allowed them to build their economy without any of the distractions of democracy. In the PRC, initial economic development focussed on growing heavy industry and the post-war recovery was pretty standard industrialising fare until they ran up against a workforce shortage in the Late 40s/early 50s - that was when the batshit policies kicked in and they tried to run a Lewis development model at the same time as overhauling their agricultural sector. Encouraging the most effective manpower to the cities while simultaneously experimenting with unproven crop husbandry techniques using the sick, lame and lazy... well, you don't need to be Malthus to predict how that would turn out. [/QUOTE]